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Being a true financial advisor is not about selling investment products. It's about helping your family, friends, clients and prospects establish a secure financial foundation for themselves. It's about helping them spend, save, invest, insure and plan wisely for the future in order to achieve financial independence.

Unfortunately, most insurance agents believe that to make more money, they need to have either the lowest-priced product, the top-performing product, the newest product, and that they must provide exceptional service. But don't all agents claim to have the lowest price, or the best and newest products? And don’t they all claim to provide exceptional service? If that’s all an agent has
to offer, how are they any different from any of the other insurance agents out there?

Do your prospects and clients think of you as a financial advisor, or do they simply think of you as just another insurance agent who sells insurance and investment products?

To make more money, you need to find a way to make yourself stand out from the hundreds of other insurance agents in your local community. The object is to keep your existing clients buying, while you identify and attract more high-quality prospects.

The second step to helping them think of you as a financial advisor is developing a unique selling proposition (USP).

Your USP is that single, compelling ideal or benefit that makes people want to do business with you instead of your competitors.

Almost every successful business, whether small or large, has a USP. In fact, that's how small businesses grow into giant corporations.

For example, both Domino’s Pizza and Federal Express became billion-dollar corporations in a very short period of time because of their powerful USP.

FedEx's USP was, "When it absolutely and positively has to be there overnight." This statement tells the potential customers that if they want to be 100 percent certain their mail will get delivered the next day, then they must use FedEx.

When formulated correctly, your USP can propel you to the top of your industry in a very short period of time. So, if you want to start improving your business, you need to invest whatever time is necessary to create a compelling USP and immediately implement it in your business.
Remember, your prospects want to know what benefits they’ll gain from doing business with you. What problems can you solve? Unless you can answer these questions to their satisfaction, you have very little chance of getting an appointment, let alone getting them to buy from you.

The main reason the prospecting and marketing materials or systems currently used by most agents are so ineffective is they don’t answer the prospects’ most important question: "What’s in it for me?" They don’t give their prospects a good reason for wanting to do business with that particular agency or agent.

How to develop and use your USP

1. Your USP should be one sentence.

2. Your USP should be either pain- or pleasure-oriented. Since most people will do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure, you might want to model your USP around the pain that your product or service removes. What problem can you solve for them?

3. Make sure your marketing theme, campaigns and business plans evolve around your USP. Have you ever seen a business who's marketing had nothing to do with their USP? It makes them look like as if they have a values conflict.

4. Your USP should address a void in the marketplace, with a promise you can honestly fufill. A mentor of mine, Hilton Johnson, gave me this formula for designing a USP: "Do you know how [state the pain or problem the prospect has]? What I do is [state the solution your product/service solves]."

The true test of whether you've designed a good USP or not is whether it sells for you in the marketplace. Does it define your edge? And, does the marketplace value it with their pocketbook?

Now use your USP when you are talking with your clients and prospects to help them understand that you are available to help them with their financial problems.

About the Author

Lew Nason, RFC, LUTCF, CFLA with his sons Jeremy Nason, RFC, CFLA and Will Nason, RFA, CFLA are the creators of the Famous Insurance Pro Shop, the 1st Affordable, Full Service Marketing and Sales Training Resource for Today's S... More